


Seven Days

by Kirstein_and_Arlert



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen, Implied Underage, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-30
Updated: 2014-10-30
Packaged: 2018-02-23 05:39:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2536196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kirstein_and_Arlert/pseuds/Kirstein_and_Arlert
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes relationships are about love, sometimes they're about sex, and sometimes they're about how fucked up you are.</p><p>Or, seven days for seven relationships.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seven Days

**1\. Monday** , **_not quite_**

 

Natasha Romanoff fucks Clint Barton on a couch on a Monday, and wishes that she could love him.

 

She does love this, the way that he pins her without fear, the way he smiles when she drags her nails down his back and gasps, _harder_ , and obeys, like she was ordering him and wasn’t halfway to begging. She thinks that he’ll beg if she asks him to, and that thought terrifies her.

 

Clint, who talks about redemption like he actually believes in it, who sees the good in her, who calls her beautiful and doesn’t act like she’s dangerous, and who is exactly the kind of person she should fall in love with.

 

Natasha thinks that, maybe in another life, she would love him, and he would love her for more than a few fleeting nights when he’s caught up in the beauty and the danger, before they both remember who and what they are.

 

Not this life. Not where it’s rushed and awkward, in a safe house they shouldn’t be using, where the leather couch is sticking to her skin.

 

Clint presses his lips against her collarbone as he comes, gasping her name a second later. She already knows that they won’t do this again.

 

Natasha Romanoff fucks Clint Barton, and it’s not quite what either of them wants.

 

 

 

**2\. Tuesday, _a lifetime_**

 

Nick Fury has been working with SHIELD for most of his life, but hasn’t known Phil Coulson for all of that.

 

Barton is half in love with Romanoff, who’s half in love with the idea of being able to be in love.

 

Nick? Nick is just tired. Tired of the daily grind, tired of the bodies left after every mission, tired of the monthly-weekly-daily failures.

 

He thinks that he remembers a time when he thought of love as a something that’s sudden and shocking – he thinks it was in the middle of a desert, sweat on his skin, surrounded by strangers and one person he called a friend until he was something more. Now it’s normal, it’s a part of his life, and he doesn’t dwell on the could haves, would haves, should haves, and the wishes.

 

“We’re getting old, Cheese,” he says over a plate of expensive pasta. They don’t talk about work outside of work hours, but sometimes he thinks they’d both like to talk about some things. About how Hill is going to go from great to one of the best in a few years, about how he thinks that there is something rotten brewing within SHIELD, about how he’s tired.

 

“Speak for yourself,” Phil replies. “I’m just getting started.”

 

Nick Fury meets Phil Coulson for dinner every Tuesday and wonders if he can really do his job for the rest of his life.

 

 

 

**3\. Wednesday, _halfway gone_**

 

Bobbi Morse fucks Lance Hunter on a bed, and knows this isn’t working.

 

She scratches him every time he thrusts into her. She scratches him like she’s trying to scar him, leave a mark that will never go away, like she hates him and, oh, life would be so much easier if she hated him.

 

Lance is an asshole, but Bobbi’s never been the type of person to pretend to _herself_ , and she’s more than willing to admit that she’s a bit of an asshole herself. That’s the problem. He snaps quickly and she can never resist egging him on, push, push, pushing him until they’re yelling at each other and breaking things.

 

There’s going to be a bruise on her hip from where she hit the table earlier after they finished yelling and started to make their way to the bedroom.

 

“Bobbi,” Lance says, and he bites her shoulder just hard enough to make her moan.

 

Bobbi pushes again, just because she can, and rolls them right off the bed. They land hard on the floor, Lance on his back, not quite winded. She grins.

 

“I love you. You know that, don’t you?” she asks, brushing her fingers across a small scar on his shoulder.

 

“Of course I do.” Lance stares at her, confused, but she leans down to kiss him before he can ask any awkward questions.

 

This isn’t going to last. Bobbi knows this, thinks she’s known since their first argument about her work, but she’s going to enjoy it while it lasts, even if it’s all going to explode at the end.

 

Bobbi Morse fucks Lance Hunter on the floor on a Wednesday, and she’s already halfway gone.

 

 

 

**4\. Thursday, _intimacy_**

 

Phil Coulson knows that he’d trust Melinda May with his life.

 

If Phil was told to choose one person, other than Nick, that he’d trust to have his back in any situation, he’d choose Melinda. It’s not even a question. They’ve known each other for so long that they’re not even friends now – she once said that she knew Phil better than she’d known her husband, or wanted to know him.

 

It’s something more than friendship, because it’s seeing someone at their best and their worst, stitching them back together without mentioning that they’re bleeding all of their secrets and pain onto the floor. It’s seeing the second that they lose all hope and not wanting to give up on them, because they matter more than anyone else. It’s about knowing that they had a reason for doing something, not approving of it, but forgiving them anyway.

 

Phil hands her a bandage without her even having to ask, and hands her the scissors after she’s measured out the length she needs. She doesn’t thank him, she just glances at him. Anyone else would think that he was presuming and that she was being rude, but they don’t need to talk to communicate.

 

Phil Coulson sits beside Melinda May as she patches herself up on a Thursday, and says nothing.

 

 

 

**5\. Friday, _betrayal_**

 

Grant Ward sits in a cell, and thinks back to when John Garrett loved him, before he went crazy.

 

John used to say _you owe me everything_ , and Grant used to believe him. He used to believe a lot of things. He thinks there was even a time when he believed that his parents loved him, but it was so long ago that he can’t even remember.

 

He used to say _you owe me everything_ , and Grant remembers the taste of whiskey for the first time, the press of John’s lips against his, and he thinks the memory is beginning to change, because it feels rougher and more demanding now. It feels cruel, now.

 

“He only cared about people if they could give him something,” Coulson says, and Grant wants to tell him that he’s wrong, that John loved him, but Coulson was his friend until he wasn’t, he was his friend when he was useful and an enemy when he wasn’t what John wanted or needed.

 

John used to say _I love you_ , until he didn’t, until he would say _sometimes I don’t know why I bothered_  or _I thought you were better than that_  or _is that weakness?_  and Grant wants to shrink away from that, but he can’t. He can’t run from the truth in this room.

 

Grant Ward used to think that John Garrett loved him, but on Friday he realises he’s not so sure now.

 

 

 

**6\. Saturday, _false impressions_**

 

Skye wishes for the old times.

 

Jemma’s spending a lot of time with Bobbi. It’s not that Skye’s jealous (even if she is a little jealous), it’s that this is just another thing that’s changed. The guy she liked turned out to be working for someone else, the man she sees as a father is too busy to talk to her half the time, she’s got a new SO, Fitz stumbles over his words now, and about half the team is made up of people that she doesn’t know.

 

And now the girl she likes is spending most of her time with a woman that Skye can hardly make conversation with – it’s not that she doesn’t like her, it’s that they don’t really have anything to talk about because they don’t have anything in common. Bobbi has plenty in common with Jemma, though, since she’s spent the last two hours hunched over a desk while they talk quickly and animatedly.

 

“Having fun?” Skye asks, and immediately hopes that her irritation isn’t clear in her voice.

 

“Oh, we were just talking about her work with super soldier serum – did you know that she was on the team for Project: Gladiator?” If she’s noticed, Jemma doesn’t let on. “Coulson told me that you think that the symbols you’re examining are a map. Can you show me some of them?”

 

They settle down at the desk, Skye spreading the new sketches that she’s done, basing them off the ones on Coulson’s wall. She explains them as well as she can, but she knows that Jemma doesn’t entirely understand it.

 

“I’ve missed this,” Jemma says quietly after Skye’s finished talking. “I still like what we’re doing now, but this, It feels like—”

 

“—Old times.”

 

Skye wishes for the old times, but finds out on a Saturday that she’s not the only one.

 

 

 

**7\. Sunday, _an end and a beginning._**

 

Leo Fitz _knows_  this.

 

Sometimes it feels like the words are on the tip of his tongue, but he can’t tell what they are. Sometimes it feels like he’ll actually be able to find them one day. Other days, it feels like he could go through the entire dictionary and never find what he’s looking for, because he’ll never recognise it.

 

He tries not to think too much about this. It’s easy. He and Mack are friends already. All he has to do is lean over and kiss him. Not too rough, but hard enough that he knows that Leo means it.

 

It takes him most of the day to work up the courage, and it’s not as well organised as he wanted it to be. It’s rushed and Leo isn’t really sure that he doesn’t half lunge, catching himself with one hand on the table and –

 

It’s awkward and fumbling, and something falls off the desk (he hopes it isn’t expensive), but he eventually manages to press his lips against Mack’s, one hand against the back of his neck, and Leo can feel his palms sweating and, oh, God, he’s not kissing him back, he’s going to push him away and ask what he’s doing and—

 

Mack pulls away just enough to say, “You can slow down sometimes, you know?” before he kisses him again.

 

Leo Fitz kisses Alphonso Mackenzie on a Sunday, and it’s not an end.


End file.
